The council officer running Southport's tourism platform
Mark Catherall is Sefton Council's Service Manager for Tourism. He runs Visit Southport. He sits on the BID board as the council's formally appointed representative. He helped design the BID before moving into his current post. This report documents the structure and asks the questions that follow from it.
Every factual claim in this report is sourced from publicly available documents, linked directly below. SIBA does not allege misconduct by any individual. SIBA welcomes corrections or responses from any party named and will publish them in full at damian@siba.digital.
Sefton Council has one officer responsible for tourism in Southport. He has held that role for over a decade. In that time, he has run the council's Visit Southport platform, sat on the board of the Southport BID as the council's formally appointed representative, and before all of that, spent over a year as the council's own BID Development Manager, helping design the BID in the first place.
His name is Mark Catherall. His title is Service Manager – Tourism at Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council. These facts are not in dispute. They appear on the BID's own website, in Sefton Council's publicly available committee minutes, and on his LinkedIn profile. None of it is hidden.
What this report examines is the governance structure that results from combining these roles, and the questions that structure requires to be answered publicly.
The roles
Mark Catherall holds three overlapping positions, all confirmed by publicly available primary sources.
Confirmed roles, April 2026
| Role | Organisation |
|---|---|
| Service Manager – Tourism | Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council |
| Leads Visit Southport | Sefton Council tourism service |
| Board director (council representative) | Southport BID |
His BID board appointment is not informal. It is listed in Sefton Council's committee minutes as an “Officer Only Appointment” approved by cabinet:
“Southport Business Improvement District (BID) Board: 1 Service Manager – Tourism (Mark Catherall)”
Source: Sefton Council modgov, Officer Outside Body Appointments
Twenty years in the same building
Mark Catherall has worked at Sefton Council since at least 2005. His LinkedIn profile, which is publicly visible, records the following progression:
Career history at Sefton Council
| Period | Role |
|---|---|
| Sep 2005 – Sep 2007 | Townscape Heritage Initiative Officer |
| Oct 2007 – May 2013 | Principal Development Officer |
| May 2013 – Sep 2014 | BID Development Manager |
| Sep 2014 – present | Service Manager – Tourism |
Source: Mark Catherall, LinkedIn
The BID Development Manager role (May 2013 to September 2014) is significant. In that capacity, Catherall worked on establishing the Southport BID. He then moved directly into the Service Manager – Tourism role, from which he has since sat on the BID board as the council's representative.
He has been involved in Southport BID governance, in one capacity or another, for over twelve years. The current BID term runs from November 2024 to November 2029.
What this structure creates
Sefton Council operates Visit Southport as its tourism service. It runs visitsouthport.com, the primary public-facing platform for Southport tourism. Editorial decisions about which businesses are featured on that platform, which events are promoted, and how the town is presented to visitors are made from within the council's Tourism Service.
The Southport BID collects a compulsory levy from approximately 720 businesses and funds promotional activity across the town. Its board makes decisions about how that money is spent. The council has one officer seat on that board. The officer who holds that seat also controls the council's own tourism platform.
Both primary channels of town centre promotion, the council's tourism platform and the BID's promotional budget, are therefore governed by or directly influenced by the same person, placed there by the same employer.
SIBA has separately published an editorial review of visitsouthport.com that documents patterns in which businesses the platform promotes and which it does not.
Declared interests
From the Southport BID website
“Southport BID operates a robust policy where any pecuniary and personal interests related to BID activities and decisions of board members or employees are recorded. To view the policy and/or the records, please contact us.”
Source: Southport BID, Our Team page
The register is not published. It is available only on direct request to the BID. There is no public searchable record of what has or has not been declared.
Sefton Council does not publish a register of officers' outside interests in the same publicly searchable form as councillors' declarations. SIBA has no visibility into what has been declared by any officer, including Catherall.
This report makes no allegation that declarations have not been made. It notes that the current arrangements make it impossible for a levy-paying business, or a member of the public, to verify that they have.
The questions
SIBA is not in a position to answer the following. Sefton Council and Southport BID are.
Is Mr Catherall's role on the BID board considered part of his formal Sefton Council duties, or an outside appointment? If the latter, was it declared and approved through the council's outside interest process?
Has Mr Catherall declared his BID board directorship in Sefton Council's register of officers' interests? If so, when was it declared, and who approved the arrangement?
In his capacity as a BID board member, does Mr Catherall declare his council role as the officer who leads Visit Southport when decisions are made about BID promotional spending?
Does Sefton Council provide any direct or indirect financial support to Visit Southport, whether as part of Catherall's salary cost, through a grant, a service level agreement, or any other mechanism?
What oversight, if any, does Sefton Council exercise over the editorial and commercial decisions made through Visit Southport, given that it operates as a council tourism service?
Formal requests submitted
SIBA has submitted two Freedom of Information requests to Sefton Council directly relevant to the questions raised in this report. All responses will be published on this site in full, unedited.
A companion analysis documents a separate but structurally related governance conflict at the BID board level. Southport's BID Treasurer is a registered active director of Mikhail Hotels and Leisure Holdings Limited while simultaneously overseeing BID finances. Together, these two cases document a governance environment where conflicts of interest are managed without public transparency.
Right of reply
If you are Mark Catherall, a representative of Sefton Council, Visit Southport, or Southport BID and you wish to respond to any aspect of this report, contact damian@siba.digital. Responses will be published in full without editing. The right of reply is open without time limit.
If you have information relevant to governance at the BID, Visit Southport, or Sefton Council, you can contact SIBA in strict confidence at the same address.